Ep #24: How Pain Can Make You a Powerful Performer

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Well, hello and welcome back to the show. We are going to walk through my life in real time, candid movement and activity. I had a tough week last week and I shared that very openly and very candidly about some of the things that I had gone through in my life and my career and some of the challenges that it posed. And today I want to focus on those challenging times and what they end up bringing up in the process of moving through them.

But I want to share what I have a tendency to do after, or I’m walking through. Any time I’m dealing with something challenging, I focus on other mediums for inspiration, and I look to the foundation of life and art and art and life. And how those are synonymous so often. And I really go back to the same foundational component and the acting technique that I’ve adopted and used in my career is the Chubbuck technique.

And Ivana Chubbuck for me, was a foundation and staple early on in my career as I started reading her book, The Power of the Actor. And really digging into how to dissect what a character does when they are becoming, when they are taking on this persona, this entity, whatever it may be that they are in the works of bringing to life. And she has some foundational things. There’s 12 foundations, and I mean, just really briefly she’ll have the main focus being the overall objective. And that’s something I never, ever lose sight of as a character, as a performer, as a woman, as a mom.

As all the things that I’m trying to be in this world, I never lose sight of the overall objective, and I’ve led with that. And then it will go into other foundations, like seeing objective and obstacles and substitution and inner objects, beats and actions, all the things that end up again, like I said, bringing that character to life. But the overall objective has allowed me to focus on the challenges or hardships in my life, almost looking like a movie and almost being like a movie. And that is where that life imitates art and vice versa.

And so, I wanted to go through what I will typically go through if I’m having a tough time or a challenging time in walking through the things in my own personal life. And sometimes that bit of sadness that you’re experiencing, you don’t just instantly move through. You can’t just move through the loss of someone really quickly. You can’t move through a current life hardship very rapidly. You can decide whether you think about it or whether you want to focus on it, or whether it’s the bulk of your day or the bulk of your thoughts. You can decide what you want to do about that.

But as you are processing through and going forward and really trying to maintain all of the other life things that you have to do while processing something hard or challenging, you still have to stay focused on your own life's overall objective. So, I am sharing today what I like to do in order to kind of create that inspiration or refocus. And one of the foundations from her book, Ivana Chubbuck’s book, The Power of the Actor I really refer to so often is in her introduction.

And it talks about another pattern I’ve observed over time is that my acting technique has a tendency to bleed into an actor’s personal life. To actually use adversity as a way to overcome it and win is so inspiring and effective that many of my actors unconsciously incorporate this way of being into their lives, becoming more personally realized and empowered. This part is really important for my brain because sometimes when we go through those challenges that I shared in episode 23, you can in your brain become a victim of circumstance.

And I loved in her introduction that she says, “They take the victimization out of their lives as they do for a scripted character.” And so, the practice that what she is encouraging is the overall objective. And she starts in part one, that 12 step part one, she starts with an actor who merely feels, tends to turn his performance inward and does not energize or inspire himself or an audience. Whereas someone doing anything and everything to override pain in an attempt to accomplish a goal or an objective puts an audience on the edge of their seats because the outcome becomes alive and unpredictable.

And that’s the way I feel in moments of challenge, moments of hardship is that I want to focus on those days forward, the energies forward, the intensities forward so that I can completely show up in my day. I can completely show up present. And as a coach when I come and I’m in the midst of dealing with my own stuff, I still am a coach to high performers and high achievers. So, as we’re working through and they’re bringing their information to me, I’m able to be fully present and compartmentalize the time that I process my own stuff and the time that I work with my clients and all of the things that they are experiencing and planning for and going through as well.

And I am a firm advocate for getting a coach, no matter what. If you want to stay mentally game on, find a coach. Find a coach that brings you that next level up, that maintains that beautiful, palpable, strong energy of encouragement, of true foundational love and substance and energy that they infuse into you and you can feel that they are absolutely on your team. That is the energy you are searching for.

One of the things that stood out as I was doing research the other day and I really loved something that Leila Hormozi had said is that she realized when she was with a coach, she had realized she had more or less kind of outgrown that coach. And her brain had said a bunch of information like, “Hey, I’m going to keep on taking information from this person.” But she had surpassed the woman in earnings. She had surpassed the experience level that she was in.

And a lot of times that information that coach was sharing with her was based upon imagination, was based upon well, if this happened hypothetically you would or could do this just by way of imagination. Those things had never happened to the person giving that advice. And she referenced that in that moment she realized, I don’t want to take advice from somebody who’s coming from this angle where they don’t even know what I’m talking about. They are not contending with the things that I’m contending with. They’re not contending with them from my angle.

And so, your brain can move forward and decide, okay, I’ve outgrown that coach, I’m onto the next. It allows you to consistently level up your game, consistently be in a realm where you push yourself to grow, and you push yourself with somebody encouraging you in your journey along the way, really looking and being that perception of that overall objective as a character.

Now I want to share another way I love to find that overall inspiration. So, I will find myself lost in sport shows and I’m talking BreakPoint, Full Swing, Beckham, Quarterback, Under Pressure. All of these documentaries or docu series that go through the life of an athlete and go through the life of somebody training to be at the top of their game. And I love the beauty of the growth process.

Now, of course, the person going through the growth process, you can see their vulnerability. You can see their hardships. You can see their challenges. A lot of times those challenges are accompanied by injury or they’re stuck in that mindset of challenge from injury. And that’s another thing I want to reference is that any time you are in this place where you’re moving through a challenge that is inflicted upon and you really, truly have no control over that and you just adapt or adjust to finding that mental motivation is key.

Finding that angle of what is going to inspire me, what’s going to keep me focused on the good, what’s going to keep me focused on how to be stronger and maintain that overall focus and growth. Now, I love to go back to my own memories and it’s watching the athletes that I had the amazing gift of working with in Le Rêve. It was this beautiful water acrobatic show in Las Vegas, it was at Wynn. I was there for almost six years and it was just beautiful. I don’t know if I’ve referenced it a lot, but it really is one of those times of my life that I have such a fond memory of, I am so truly grateful for. I’m grateful for the time, for the friendships.

Oh my gosh, the friendships I have are so beautiful from that show. But I look at the inspiration of these athletes and the way they would train. Now, mind you, I’m going in and I’m on the treadmill or I’m on the bike or I’m stretching or I’m doing something like that after I’ve done a run. And these beautiful athletes are keeping their machine, their work in top physical condition. And a lot of the athletes they had the opportunity to work with transitioned into becoming stunt performers and now are major stunt players in the industry and are incredible and doing incredible work.

And it will be very fun again to hear from them coming up in future episodes. So, I think about their training and their eating and their sleep schedule and how they treat their bodies. And I think about the beauty behind all of, I guess, I want to call it the pain, that consistent motivational tapping in. You are going to actually physically hurt at times, but the beauty behind that regimented pain is so inspiring to me. And so, I will consistently revert back to those memories of major motivation and you can see well, obviously when you’re watching them perform, you can see how beautiful and brilliant they are.

You can see the physical composition and their makeup and how gorgeous and how extremely talented and skilled they are. And the show that I was in was truly a spectacle in my opinion. I mean, it was voted Las Vegas’s number one show multiple years in a row but, of course, it was my absolute favorite. And as I would watch it while I was singing, I would feel, there would be sometimes when I’m watching them and watching these athletes perform and I would forget that I was in the midst of performing with.

And I would, every now and again I would kind of be like, “That’s my part.” And I never missed a part. It wasn’t anything like that. But it was one of those where you’re so immersed in the moment and the excellence and the brilliance of the moment that it becomes inspiring. And so even in the evolution of my story, you can hear the evolution of my story and my intensity and my connection to the story through what I just explained. The start of how my voice was at the beginning and the intensity and where my voice is now.

And it is truly as I’m immersed in that memory, a positive memory and foundational experience for myself. So, I encourage each one of you performers that as you are working through any challenge, any mindset shift, any hardship that comes to your family or something that you are working through. It is something that is so important to find those little nuggets that stick out for you, this is compounded on a number of things and my son was in an automobile accident and his car was totaled. He is fine.

My daughter had slammed her fingers in the door in that first part of the week, and there were just so many different things that again, were added to my personal and professional plate. And so, working through all of these things, I want to encourage each and every single individual, find what your foundational inspiration is. And through that, continue to work back to that point of positive mindset, positive focus.

So, when jumping back in the game, being extremely focused, having the mental capacity to navigate and grow and respond and adjust accordingly has been the overall focus, especially as a coach. Especially as someone who is trying to maintain that intensity and support for all of their clients as well, while simultaneously living my own life.

I want to finish up with this and this is really what I like to think about as that final inspiration and overall objective for my own focus. And again, that’s from The Power of the Actor of Anna Chubbuck’s book. I mean there’s so many amazing tools and tips throughout, but the technique that she teaches and it says this.

“This technique will teach you how to use your traumas, emotional pains, obsessions, travesties, needs, desires, and dreams to fuel and drive your character’s achievement of a goal. You will learn that the obstacles of your character’s life”, and I like to think about myself in this, “Are not meant to be accepted, but overcome in heroic proportions.”

In other words, my technique teaches actors how to win. And when I look at that transferable life information and art imitating life, I think about this movie, this life, this process that I’m in while I’m living that overall objective, how does my character win? How do I maintain that realignment? How do I maintain growing and being at the top of my game? And so even through those hardships, even through those challenges, we come back, we refocus, we realign and get our head back in the game.

My beautiful performers, if at all you ever need encouragement, reach out. I will be doing a confidence campaign for free in July, my birthday month. And I will be sharing information on how to increase your confidence, how to grow as a performer, how to really find and master and understand your story and your beautiful story so that you are able to share the beauty that is you with the rest of the world.

So, thank you so much for listening to this. Thank you so much for bearing with me through my own personal life adventures. And I want to thank you so much for tuning in. If you have not listened to all the other episodes, please do so. Take a moment and really just tap back into all of the other episodes that I’ve done and thank you so much. Take care of yourself and be well.

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Thank you for listening to today’s episode of The Confident Performer. If you want to learn more about living your truth and showing up as your most authentic, beautiful self, visit www.amyadamscoaching.com. See you next week!